Sunday, 9:14 p.m.
“You heard?” Sheriff Roger Gardner demanded.
No pleasantries, no easing into it. Just a city-bred cut to the chase.
Dallas Herbert Monroe rocked back as much as he could in his easy chair, wishing it were the chair behind his desk, which allowed more latitude, and studied the younger man from beneath lowered lids.
He’d adopted this pose early in his career. It masked when the pilot light on his mind fired up. No sense warning other folks when you were about to strike. Lost half the advantage of having a devious mind if folks knew you were fixing to be devious.
Not that he needed to do the lowered lids much these days. His mind still fired up with enough regularity to keep his skull from freezing — no, that hadn’t changed, thank God.
What had changed was the face that stared back at him from the mirror while he shaved each morning. Under eyebrows trailing the rest of his hair toward silver, skin pouched and folded until it resembled another eyelid.
Come to think of it, a second layer of defense might be handy now that he was supposed to be on the same team with the sheriff.
This new sheriff was sharp. This would take some handling.
“I heard,” Dallas said with a slow nod. “A tragedy. One so young, one so beautiful. Judge Blankenship will be devastated.”
Something crossed the other man’s face. “He is.”
“Ah.” Gardner had gone to Rambler Farm first. Courtesy or politics? Or could the sheriff suspect someone there?
“Had a devil of a time keeping him from heading right to the scene,” Gardner added. “Had a devil of a time keeping half the county from tramping all over the scene.”
Dallas nodded. “That’s why I stayed put. You got lights out there? I can go with you now.”
Dallas braced himself against the chair’s worn upholstery. Ruth would have had it re-covered years ago. But she’d been gone more than a decade and he hadn’t had the heart to change it.
The sheriff didn’t budge from the couch across from him. “Not sure this is going to work, Dallas.”
“I’m the duly elected Commonwealth’s Attorney for Bedhurst County. It’s my duty—”
“You’re also the defense attorney from a murder that took place at the same spot, with the victim another attractive young woman.”
Yes, Roger Gardner was sharp. And he’d done his homework. The murder of Pan Wade and J.D.’s trial predated Gardner’s election as sheriff by four years.
“He was acquitted.” Dallas’s voice was harsher than he would have liked.
“He’s in the county. And even more connected to you now.”
“I told you when you called, J.D. was here with me yesterday evening, well into the night. You can’t be saying he’s—”
“I’m not saying anything except that in a county with seven homicides in a decade, only two have not been domestics or bar fights — and both those were killings of attractive young women at the same hidden-away spot in the woods practically on your boy Carson’s doorstep.”
He couldn’t let Gardner shut him out of this investigation.
Too much rested on it.
He’d been sitting here thinking about that, trying to work it all out ever since word came about Laurel Blankenship Tagner.
“As the duly elected Commonwealth’s Attorney for Bedhurst County, I’m going out there with you. As will my associate.”
“Dammit, Monroe—”
Evelyn appeared at the arched opening. “Can I get you gentlemen anything? Coffee? Something else to drink?”
“No thank you, Mrs. DuPree,” Gardner said, a flicker crossing his face.
The same flicker that had crossed his African American features the first time he’d come into Monroe House and met the solid black woman who served as Dallas’ housekeeper.
She’d told the sheriff half a dozen times to call her Evelyn. He hadn’t listened. And yet, Dallas thought, the younger man probably believed he was being respectful.
Dallas also declined her offer of coffee with thanks.
When she left, he took up the conversational reins Gardner had dropped, as had surely been Evelyn’s intent by timing her arrival then. Dallas knew she was still listening from the hallway, and she’d have an opinion to share later.
“Sheriff Gardner, let’s be honest here. You need me. You don’t know this county. I do.” A modest understatement. No one knew this county the way Dallas Herbert Monroe did. And no one knew that better than Dallas Herbert Monroe. But modesty never went amiss.
“I know having you anywhere near the case until we know for sure if it’s connected or not to the one four and a half years ago is—”
“Who better to tell you if the two cases are connected than the defense attorney from the first trial?”
“Oh, I can think of a couple people just as good,” Gardner said with cutting dryness. “Starting with the murderer.”
Dallas settled deeper into his chair. So, now the real haggling began.